It was a coin-toss chance that pulled professional golfer Wayne Perske off the ill-fated Malaysian Airlines flight frighteningly close to take off.

After a nasty bout of food poisoning saw him retire early from an event in Kuala Lumpur, the 39-year-old father of two from Brisbane was scheduled to fly to Beijing to join the Chinese PGA qualifying school.

Australian professional golfer Wayne Perske at the Australian Open in Melbourne in 2006. Photo: Getty Images

His seat was booked on flight MH370.

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But in the 24 hours before take-off, he was told he had been drawn to play in the second week of qualifying, rather than the first.

Instead of boarding the flight, which is now believed to have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean, he travelled home to his young family in Brisbane.

“Too bloody close for comfort!” he tweeted on March 8, the day the plane disappeared.

On Friday morning he told 2UE radio he was feeling “extremely lucky” to be at home with his wife and kids.

“I obviously looked at the news [when I got to Brisbane] and saw, and it's just sort of escalated over the last however many days the poor buggers have been lost, just wondering what could have happened,” he said.

“It's a weird feeling. Having travelled the world for 15 years playing golf, it's one of those things that only happens to other people, you know, planes going down … As time goes on, I'm reflecting.”